Conventional LED light source apparatuses have been proposed, that can utilize a plurality of LED light sources and which can be handled as a single light source (for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-157904).
FIG. 1 is a cross sectional view of such an LED light source apparatus as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-157904.
In FIG. 1, the light source apparatus can be applied to a vehicle headlamp 200 and can have a plurality of light-converging cylindrical hoods 210 with an inner reflective surface 211 and a plurality of LED light sources 220 that are disposed so as to correspond to the respective light-converging hoods 210. The LED light sources 220 can be attached to the respective ends of the light-converging hoods 210 so that their optical axes AX1 cross the axis AX2 of the light-converging hood 210 at least one point P. When energized, the LED light sources 220 can emit light which can be reflected by the inner reflective surface 211 of the light-converging hoods 210 so as to be projected from the other end 212 of the light-converging hoods 210. The light-converging hood 210 should be adjusted by the opening angle α as shown in its cross section including the axis X of one light-converging hood 210, so that a pseudo light source P can be formed at the other end 212.
Since the LED light source apparatus 200 can operate as a pseudo light source P by through a plurality of light-converging hoods 210, if a certain amount of light intensity is required, the number of LED light sources must increase together with the increased number of the light-converging hoods 210. In this case, it is difficult to aim the optical axes of large number of LED light sources so as to form a pseudo light source P. A further problem is that the configuration of these light-converging hoods may be complicated.